WWE Announce WrestleMania 29 as Its Highest Grossing Event Ever

The WrestleMania 29 extravaganza will now go down as the highest-grossing event in WWE history, per a press release the company sent out earlier today.

As industry publication Varietynoted the entire WrestleMania weekend garnered the company a whopping $72 million, up significantly from last year's $67 million for WrestleMania 28. It also drew 80,676 fans to New Jersey's Met Life Stadium, once again up from the crowd of 78,363 at Miami's Sun Life Stadium.

Variety also said that the pay-per-view, headlined by the heavily-anticipated rematch between The Rock vs. John Cena, is projected to have done 1.2 million buys. Down slightly from last year's record-breaking 1.3 million purchases, but still a tremendous number.

So, what can we gather from this?

Well, for all the claims that Rock/Cena II had a lukewarm build up that never truly got off the ground, it seems to have had made little to no difference to the show's overall success.

It is additionally clear that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson still has it. Recently I suggested, spurned on by the (relatively) mediocre pay-per-view buyrate figures for his bouts with CM Punk earlier in the year, that Johnson's drawing power in wrestling was on the wane, and it might be time for him to step back from the business.

It seems these calls were premature: Johnson's drawing power is as formidable as it ever was.

It's also worth noting the WrestleMania buyrate probably won't do CM Punk, who has long faced accusations that he is unable to draw on top, any favors whatsoever. When you can't draw significantly in a singles bout with Rock, there might be a problem.

Of course, the real tragedy is that Rock has proven his incredible value to WWE, just shortly after admitting to Pete Rosenberg in an interview that the Cena rematch may very well be his last match ever. Considering the litany of injuries he suffered during the pay-per-view (as he noted on Twitter, he had to have surgery on Monday), it wouldn't be surprising at all if he decided to stop wrestling altogether.

No doubt the WWE accounting department will not be happy at all, if this is the case.